The bounty means that the response to the Columbus Diaper Coalition, a free “diaper bank,” has
exceeded what she dreamed.

“Every day, I’d come home from work and there were boxes of diapers, taller than I am, stacked
on my front porch,” she said. “It was shocking, and it was hard not to tear up a little bit at the
generosity.”

The coalition aims to help people such as Danielle Ricketts, a single mother of three who works
for minimum wage at a fast-food restaurant.

Ricketts goes through $24 worth of disposable diapers a week for her 3-year-old.

Once a month, because of the coalition, she gets 32 diapers — several days’ worth — free from
the Northside Food Pantry on Cleveland Avenue.

“It helps a lot,” she said. “Every little bit helps.”

Coker, a senior community manager at the Columbus digital-

marketing agency Resource, founded the coalition last year after hearing about other cities
where diaper banks had sprung up to meet the “diaper gap.”

The National Diaper Bank Network, a nonprofit based in Connecticut, uses the term to reinforce
that 5.9 million children 3 and younger are being raised in poor or low-income families, which
often struggle to afford disposable diapers.

Neither the federal food-stamp nor the Women, Infants and Children program covers diapers.

Cloth diapers might be more economical, but financially distressed families often lack washing
machines. Some coin laundries, according to the network, don’t allow diapers in their machines.
Also, many early-childhood education programs require the use of disposables.

Armed with such facts, Coker enlisted the help of two Resource co-workers — Lara Smith and
Peyton Onda — to create a diaper bank in Columbus.

They began soliciting donations in September and were supplying diapers by November to the
Northside Food Pantry and the Fruit of the Vine Pantry on E. 5th Avenue.

Between them, the pantries — both operated by the Vineyard Columbus church — have received
16,000 diapers from the coalition since November.

“We always had the demand,” said Hassan Saadat, volunteer coordinator at the Northside Food
Pantry, which serves an average of 110 families a week.

Until the coalition came along, the pantry was limiting families to six diapers a week; now, it
can give 32.

Brooke McCane, a 17-year-old mother of two, visited the pantry on a recent Saturday to pick up
diapers for her year-old daughter.

With her older child, she extended the use of each diaper and pushed him in toilet training,
said McCane, recently hired as a hotel housekeeper.

The coalition’s work, she said, lessens those challenges with her younger child.

Even with the food pantry’s help, said a Columbus woman who asked to remain unidentified, she
still spends about $40 a month on diapers for a 3-year-old.

She is raising the four children of a relative who lost custody of them because of mental
illness and drug addiction.

“The big box of diapers is $20, $21, and it lasts a week and a half,” she said. “This
helps."

The diaper coalition, an all-volunteer effort, has relied mainly on word-of-mouth, social media
and monthly fundraisers to advertise the need for donations of diapers or money.

“People have been really generous,” Smith said.

The coalition received a big boost late last year when Domtar, a Canadian diaper-maker with
operations in central Ohio, donated 12,000 diapers.